We awoke to a beau­ti­ful morn­ing in Reyk­javik. The clouds and wind had moved on and it was lovely and sunny. We stayed up too late which is easy to do when it’s con­tin­u­ally bright out­side. I think I’m still adjust­ing to the time change from Seattle/East Coast and the long days.

We had a nice din­ner last night at an Ital­ian Restau­rant Rospo­modoro. There seems to be a lot of Ital­ian places here, but they all serve Ice­landic food. Greg had a shot of the Bren­nivin the Ice­landic sig­na­ture bev­er­age (40% alco­hol) which trans­lates lit­er­ally to “black death”. It was tra­di­tion­ally had along with “hakari” the putri­fied shark peo­ple ate after bury­ing it (the shark) in the ground to pre­serve it. It masked the shark’s “blue-cheese” like taste. Despite being very cheap it’s not pop­u­lar with the younger gen­er­a­tion (many of whom have drug and alco­hol prob­lems) as they drink the newer brands Opal and Ice­landic beer. I had a sip and it was fine. A bit like Robi­tus­san. Quite med­i­c­i­nal and warmed the belly. Greg had monk­fish with pota­toes. Fresh and very good. No Ice­landic wine to speak of but what­ever I drank and ate was fine. We have walked a ton here so food was a wel­come thing. Other del­i­ca­cies I may (or may not) try are signed sheep heads, ram tes­ti­cles, and liver and blood pud­ding. Accord­ing to one of the books I read hot dogs are a national favorite here. Lots of hot dog stands which I think mostly serve tourists that find the prices incred­i­bly high here and the folks com­ing out of the bars after a heavy night of drink­ing that are hungry.

Today (Thurs­day the 28th) we started the day at one of the many Wi-Fi cafes with cof­fee and break­fast. It was 10am or so and not many peo­ple out. Per­haps they were all at work, or it being sum­mer, par­tied late into the night and were still asleep. We then walked back to the H. (I can’t keep re-spelling this) church and rode the ele­va­tor to the top for won­der­ful 360 views of the city. Really, a lovely view and won­der­ful photo oppor­tu­ni­ties. I would not rec­om­mend going at the turn of the hour how­ever, as the bells ring out right above your head. Ouch! They were hav­ing an organ con­cert today as they do sev­eral times a week dur­ing the sum­mer. We had the place mostly to our­selves though, which was very nice.

We then walked quite a ways to the Reyk­javik zoo and fam­ily park. It was a nice walk though res­i­den­tial areas. The stan­dard of liv­ing is high in Ice­land and it is reflected in the nice homes all geo-thermally heated from the hot water beneath the earth. The zoo is near ath­letic parks and a large out­door soc­cer field. The zoo was fairly quiet for being such a nice sum­mer day and wasn’t exactly a zoo with a wide vari­ety of ani­mals. There were sev­eral seals, some Ice­landic horses, goats, sheep, live crabs in a tank (lunch?), roost­ers and chick­ens. Next door were the botan­i­cal gar­dens which basi­cally had a few Ice­landic species of plants and plants from the rest of the world. Plenty of rep­re­sen­ta­tions from the Pacific NW. Lots of peo­ple here enjoy­ing the sun. I believe there will be quite a few sun­burnt peo­ple tomor­row (Greg included).

We wound our way back towards the down­town part of the city and hap­pened to stum­ble upon The Asmundarsafn (Reyk­javik Art Museum), the Asmundur Sveins­son Sculp­ture Museum ded­i­cated to the works of the sculp­tor Asmundur Sveins­son (1893–1982) housed in a beau­ti­ful white domed build­ing where he had his stu­dios for years. The build­ing is unique designed and con­structed by Sveins­son from 1942–1950 The idea behind the build­ing stems from the Mediter­ranean, the domed houses of the Ara­bic tra­di­tion and the pyra­mids of Egypt. THe build­ing housed his stu­dios and his home until he built a home behind the stu­dios to make his work more acces­si­ble to the pub­lic. The sculp­tures were incred­i­ble. The day was sunny so the blue sky streamed through the white build­ing onto the mar­ble floors and sculp­tures. The gar­dens out­side had more sculp­tures. Again, not many peo­ple there at all. Fine by me.

We walked back the city and went in search of the Phal­lic Muse­ums which, of course, Greg had to see. We looked and looked but it was too small to find (: > ) Finally we asked a women at a hotel and she said it had moved to the north of the coun­try. Maybe Greg will still get to go. Unfor­tu­nately he had to con­sole him­self with a cafe latte and an hour of WOW play­ing back at the hotel before we ven­tured out for a some­what early-ish din­ner (7:30pm).

Tomor­row is our last day in Reyk­javik. We have to leave by noon and get to the bus ter­mi­nal to pick up our 4X4 camper so no stay­ing up all night. Our box of hik­ing clothes finally arrived from the states to the hotel today. Yay! I’m hop­ing for nice weather but you can’t tell what will hap­pen in the city let alone the rest of the Island (By the way Ice­land is spelled Island which con­fused me at first as I couldn’t fig­ure out why there were so many Island banks). I’ll be sad to leave this city as it’s just wonderful.